1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus, a method, and a computer program product for detecting a dialog from plural input speeches.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, there has been an increasing opportunity of using electronic information operation devices, such as an input device, a sensor, a display device, and a personal computer that handle audio, images, and videos. For example, there is a mode of using a projector and a monitor of a personal computer to project presentation data and reference the data in explanations and discussions. In the mode of using an electronic whiteboard, information can be written to presentation information, by detecting a position of a pen and a fingertip operated on the electronic whiteboard.
After the communication action, or during the action, it is often necessary to search information or confirm presence of conversations or communications, based on the content of the past communications, such as to confirm with whom a conversation was made at a certain time and date, or when the last conversation with a certain person was made, or to whom certain data was shown.
To carry out this work, first the occurrence of the communication itself needs to be detected. For this purpose, it is considered possible to use a method of detecting whether the communications can be carried out using terminals having a function of carrying out mutual communications. However, according to this method, while the presence of terminals around can be detected, it is not possible to determine whether the communications are actually carried out using the terminals.
That is, according to this method, it is possible to detect information about “who was present nearby at a certain time and date”, “when was a certain person present nearby” or “who was present when certain data was disclosed”. However, according to this method, detection of communications as an intended purpose cannot be achieved. When communications are carried out on a corridor, not in the environment of established facility such as an office or a conference room, facility and terminals having the communication function are not always present. Therefore, not only communications but also presence of a person nearby cannot be detected.
On the other hand, regarding the method of managing the communication state, there are many proposals of techniques of managing data and object relevant to the communications after carrying out the communications mainly at a conference, and techniques of easily detecting data.
For example, JP-A 2004-30293 (KOKAI) proposes a technique of collectively managing information and relevant data used in the works and communications. According to the method disclosed in JP-A 2004-30293 (KOKAI), various kinds of information such as a position of a person relevant to the operation, time, content of the operation, and information storage destination are recorded as a work list, by relating these pieces of information to each other. With this arrangement, operability of understanding the content of information relevant to the operation can be improved.
However, according to the method disclosed in JP-A 2004-30293 (KOKAI), processing load is large, because many pieces of information need to be input by relating them to each other. Further, although speeches are input, the speeches are recorded by simply relating the speeches to other information, and therefore a dialog cannot be detected from the speeches. As a result, information cannot be detected from the dialog state.